Last month, a joint team from ClimbDali and Horsepen46 Guesthouse successfully summited the 5,396m (17,703 ft) Haba snow mountain, located 200KM to the north of Dali. Currently, it is the only "snow mountain" in Yunnan for which it is permissable to climb. Our route took us from the west side of the Haba ridge (about 20KM north of the starting point of the Tiger Leaping Gorge). We began the slow ascent from 2,000m and slowly worked our way up to the ridgeline, spending the night with some Yizu villagers mining for tungsten.

On day 2, we crossed over a 4,400m ridge and were treated to specatcular views of TianBao Mountain (AbuJi) in the distance, and the twin dragon ponds below. After an unintentional detour that cost us about 2 hours, we arrived at Haba base camp in the late  afternoon. Day 3 was spent resting and acclimatizing, as we prepared for an early summit attempt the following day. We awoke at 4am and began the slow slog to the top. Upon arriving at the haba glacier, we strapped on our crampons and latched on our ice axes and frontpointed our way up. By this point, winds had started to gust at 50KM/hr and the temperature had dropped well below freezing, and the last few hundred meters up felt increasingly desparate. Still, at 10am, we successfully summited, paused for a couple pictures, and hiked back down to basecamp.

Our route out took us down to Haba village through one of the most spectacular sections of old growt forest that I have ever encountered in Yunnan. The following morning, we hiked a little-known trail from Haba village to XinCun, one of the trailheads for the Tiger Leaping Gorge. We almost ended up back up the mountain, but thanks to some quick thinking (and luck!), we found a steep goat path that led straight down to the Yangze river. We hitched a ride with a couple Tibetan truck drivers back to Qiaotou, and the circumambulation of Haba was complete!